Amazon Web Services buys more land around Stockholm

The cloud company has acquired two plots of land in the area around Stockholm: one in Katrineholm and the other in Eskilstuna.

Prepared for the future

– Sebastian Moss

AWS bought 21 hectares of land in Katrineholm for SEK 52.5 million (US$5.8m), and 12.3 hectares in Eskilstuna for SEK 30.7 million ($3.4m). It already operates data centers in both regions, with a third facility in Västerås.

The purchase, so soon after opening its data centers, "sends a strong signal that the data center market is developing very strongly in the Stockholm region and that our region is a strong attraction point to international investors," Anna Gissler, acting CEO of Stockholm Business Region, said.

AWS is not the only cloud company interested in the region - last week, it was joined by Microsoft, which acquired 130 hectares of land across two sites in the vicinity of Stockholm for SEK 269 million (US$29.6m).

Further north, lies land owned by Google. In 2017, the company acquired 109 hectares of land in the Avesta municipality, in the Dalarna region of Sweden, but said that it had no immediate plans to build a data center at the site.